Tag: mindlessknitting

When I wrote about working on Intersect last week, I was actually suffering from “almost-nothing-on-the-needles” syndrome. It’s a bad thing, especially when working on something that needs full concentration. One of my favourite pastimes is binge-watching Netflix while knitting, otherwise known as “knitflixing”. It’s a thing amongst knitters, believe me. Intersect and Netflix however, do not gell. At. All. The only thing I can manage to watch while knitting those cable charts is the weather report and that gets old fast.

This means that Intersect is actually Work. As in, not mindlessly relaxing, but once you get into the flow it’s enjoyable nonetheless. It requires brain cells, and mine are sometimes incapacitated by a thick fog.

So what was needed was a mindless knitting project that could be done when Intersect was too much for my brain to handle, and Netflix was beckoning. In the past, I have been known to have multiple projects on the go at any given time. Every knitter has his or her ideal number of WIP’s, right?
My WIP list used to look something like this (or multiples of this)

1. simple stockinette in the round (not too big so can travel to doctors office)

2. something with a bit of lace or colour for when my lucid moments

3. a fresh cast on, preferably a test to give me a deadline

4. a shawl (this is recent, I never used to dig shawls much, but things have changed!)

5. sleeves. (no socks, no please no socks but Sleeve Island is never far)

On any given moment these 5 would be on rotation, #1 (most likely a sweater body) would be finished; #3 (the fresh cast on) would progress past sleeve separation and morph into the #1 spot. #2 and #4 might occur in the same project, no problemo. And sleeves, well there is always at least one, right?

Lately, however, I have found myself finishing. all. the. things. And not casting on something new. And when you do that often enough, you end up with just The Beast to knit. Said Beast grew into a bolero with 2 sleeves (yay) last week, which left me with nothing mindless to knit. Because cables.

After much to-ing and fro-ing I decided to uproot my entire queue and careful planning and finally cast on that eternal dream: a black lace cardi. Now since black lace cardis come in many different guises and there’s only a fine line between coolness and rocking your gran’s style, I chose a pattern that has been on my wishlist since the day it was published.Reagan by Isabell Kraemer

Imagine this in black and presto: UTTER coolness if ever I saw it. Wear it upside down, sleeves folded, I mean come on! Even in black you couldn’t look like your gran if you tried!

As luck would have it, I also had the original yarn in stash in black. Kismet I tell you. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?
Anyway, Garnudsalg Blackhill CottonWool is the original yarn, and it’s definitely in my top 3 of all time favourites, because: non-itchy, non-scratchy, great colours, and works fabulously at a multitude of gauges.